Hilda Bowers

When I was first diagnosed with diabetes, blood glucose testing was not available. I heard about it through a support group I joined in college, eight years after being diagnosed. Health care people told me to try to control my diabetes until a cure could be found. Well, here I am 50 years later and there is no cure. However, doctors and nurses also told me about insulin pumps, which looked huge and clunky, and I chose to stay with insulin injections.

Eleven years after diagnosis, I gave birth to my first son. Doctors tried to discourage me from having children, but I really wanted to be a mom. So I was sent to the University of Iowa Hospital for my care. When my first son was born, he was very sick, even purple. This was after an emergency c-section. Fortunately, he lived and is now 38 years old. We had a second son, who is 37. His beginning was better due to better self-care on my part.

Fifty years of diabetes has taught me a lot about self-awareness, and self-control, perseverance and patience. Just to name a few characteristics. I am so grateful to be using an insulin pump that uses AI and helps me control my blood glucose ranges. I have no diabetic complications other than a necrobiosis on my shin that is much lighter than it was when I was 18. (It was a very angry red then.)

Who knows, maybe I will live to see a cure for diabetes yet!